Hemingway — Eindhoven, Netherlands | July 2002
“Et alors, Monsieur Hemingway, ça va mieux?”
Vreeew, the conductor’s whistle howls and the doors close with a hiss. I’m on the train to Maastricht, on my way to a job interview. The prospect of the interview has been causing a slight tingle in my stomach all morning, but at the moment, the sight of passengers reading the free Metro newspaper is really wrecking my nerves.
The reason for this is an email I received from the paper’s travel-editor a couple of days ago. “Thanks for your submission,” it read, “we’ll put it in Thursday’s edition.”
Yes, I submitted a story to the paper. A couple of weeks ago I saw a request for the submission of stories relating to public transport abroad. I figured I had something to share and so I sat at my computer, put on Paolo Conte for flow, and wrote a short fragment about a trip I made in Kenya the previous year. It’s the first time I’ve ever submitted anything for publication and they accepted it, quite surreal.
Today is Thursday. All the passengers who sit casually reading the Metro in this compartment will at some point see what I wrote, and I will see how they react. I’m not ready for this.
Of course I submitted my article to the paper so that people would read my work, but I never expected to be a witness to it. I take a seat in the corner of the carriage, trying not to look at the other passengers and open my copy of the Metro.
My story is smack in the middle of the back page. It looks nice, the title Woestijn Bus (desert bus), my name in the by-line. This (in translation) is what they read:
Woestijn Bus
Sitting on top of a ramshackle old lorry — the only form of public transport in Northern Kenya — we’re making our way through the Chalbi Desert, Turkana territory. Women and children rest on the cargo while we men hang on to the wobbly metal frame, bouncing up and down as the lorry sways violently over the desert’s rocky terrain.
The first hour I’m trying to find a comfortable position, to keep myself from falling down and finding myself very, very adventurous.
A few hours later I’ve given up on the idea of being comfortable and my hands are hurting from continuously sliding over the rusty beams.
“Luckily we’ll be in Loyangalani tomorrow morning,” I cheerfully say to my neighbour.
“Tomorrow?” he asks.
“Yes, if this journey takes eight hours, we’ll be there in the morning, right?”
“Eight hours? No, no, two days at least, if he doesn’t take too long with his negotiations.”
“Negotiations, who?”
“The boss. He’s Kikuyu, they love money too much.”
“So the day after tomorrow?”
“If we’re lucky, yes.”
The day after tomorrow… Suddenly I feel pain in all my limbs and really can’t find a comfortable position. I don’t feel very adventurous anymore.
Every time I see someone turning to the back page of the Metro, I can’t help but stare and blush. What are they thinking? I feel very self-conscious until I realise that nobody actually knows who I am. The only one who knows I wrote that story on the back page is me.
This is quite a revelation; it doesn’t matter what others think! I enjoyed the writing, it was relaxing, I should keep doing it.
Paolo Conte. Hemingway on The Best of Paolo Conte [CD]. Quebec, Canada: RCA Records (1986)
This autobiographical sketch comes from my bundle In the Moment: A Disjointed Audiobiography which is available at Amazon.com. (USD 9.50 for a paperback or USD 4.50 for the Kindle version)
